In the audio slideshow above, the Shanghai-based artists Ji Weiyu and Song Tao, who work together under the collective name Birdhead, talk about their installation in MoMA’s New Photography 2012 exhibition. Read more

In the audio slideshow above, photographer Zoe Crosher talks about the wall installation from her ongoing series The Michelle duBois Project, currently on view in MoMA’s New Photography 2012 exhibition. Read more

Boris Mikhailov is one of the leading photographers from the countries that formerly constituted the Soviet Union, and his work is currently on view in the exhibitionBoris Mikhailov: Case History at the Museum (through September 5). Read more

The addition of a major work to the collection is always an exciting event at MoMA. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s nine-part photographic work Winding Towers (1966–97) is one such highlight among recent acquisitions in the Department of Photography. Read more

Sometimes, after I encounter a great work of art, I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. And that’s a good thing—the work touches and evokes something deep inside that lingers for months, even years. I had this experience when I first saw Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a 45-minute slide show of some 700 color pictures set to a soundtrack. Read more

Carter Mull‘s work in New Photography 2009 is full of vibrant color and patterns. Beyond the surface is a body of work that explores language, our relationship to images in an image-saturated world, and the spectre of the death of print media and chemical photography. In the following Q&A, Carter talks to me in detail about his work.

Eva Respini:How did you become interested in the Los Angeles Times as the starting point for the body of work on view in New Photography 2009?

Carter Mull: Initially, I was drawn to a question about the psychological impact of an image. Journalism and the media had been in the background of my thinking for a number of years—and I was curious about the question of how one responds to an image of distant trauma, contextualized within the framework of the local newspaper. Also, the very material—the literal placement of advertising next to news—was an intriguing reality.

ER: The title for this series is Triggers for Everyday Fiction, and you refer to these photographs as “triggers” and “responses.” I like thinking about the relationship between the pictures as a kind of call and response. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

CM: The project began about two years ago with the initial program of considering a media site, in this case the Los Angeles Times, as a point of departure. I wanted to treat the lead image of the paper as a generator of sorts—and the output of the works as a whole as somehow governed by the grammar of the idea. The terms you refer to work as a nomenclature to designate points within the body of work. At the moment, I think about the images taken together as a series of passages—and as an active cognitive process. Read more

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